Interesting news bit posted by the new Japanese baseball blog NPB Tracker, reporting that the Hanshin Tigers are scouting Lotte’s Lee Dae-ho. This despite the fact that Lee doesn’t fulfill his service requirement for another three years.

I was thinking about the idea — in my mind Lee is the best pure hitter in Korea. He could probably hit in MLB, but I don’t think his glove is MLB capable. I also  don’t think any team would sign him as a DH. Japan could be a good  option.  But then it got me thinking about Kim Dong-ju, who will free to go play wherever he watns, and  is actually a similar-style hitter as Lee Dae-ho. He tried to make a late run at playing in Japan this past off-season when he felt Doosan was lowballing him. Kim is not quite an MLB hitter — he has less power than Lee and no major league team needs a decent, but not outstanding thirdbaseman who’s going to hit 5 to 10 HRs a year.

Low and behold, tonight I find an article talking about how Hanshin is scouting BOTH Lee Dae-ho and Kim Dong-ju. Hmm.

I didn’t do any kind of KBO ranking or metrics discussion this week, so how about a look at the career numbers of Kim Dong-ju and Lee Dae-ho?

That’s Lee Dae-ho. Great patience, power, lots of line drives — as I said, the best pure hitter in the KBO. If he were to go to Hanshin it would leave such a hole in the Lotte Giants lineup the team would be better off just cancelling the 2009 season.

Thing is, the Giants owners are notoriously cheap, so if an NPB team was willing to pay enough it could happen. I tend to think players have every right to try and make  as much money as they can, but I don’t always get the  sense  NPB fans feel the same…at least when their favorite players are heading to the U.S. I’m assuming they’d  maintain a similar opinion concerning the  idea of Korea’s best hitter coming to Japan.  How  ironic it would be if Korea’s best player signed with a Japanese team the same year as the  NBP’s best player jumped to MLB?    

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Actually, if I had to bet on one —  I’d bet on the latter happening for 2009.  But I digress.  Kim Dong-ju will be looking to sign with a Japanese team this offseason.  What have we got here?

Notice Kim Dong-ju’s career OBP and OPSs are  actually higher than Lee Dae-ho’s. Less power than Dae-ho, but every bit the hitter and he’s done it over his entire career. Check out his walk to strikeout ratios as time has gone on.  I really like both these guys.

Kim Dong-ju is also a  better fielder, and — I don’t like to say things like this — but he’s more a firely competitor. Not that  Dae-ho isn’t, but Kim Dong-ju  fairly routinely gets into shoving matches and stare downs. He’s a — oh, here I go again — gamer. Really solid #2 or 3 hitter. He’s batting mostly cleanup this year for Doosan, and it’s working fine. But he’s a natural #2 hitter.

Interesting ideas being floated around.